The Russian aggression against Ukraine forces Europeans to reconsider the very purpose and viability of the European project. Can and should the European Union become a major geopolitical actor? Is it possible and desirable to create a truly sovereign Europe? And finally, for that to happen can the EU be transformed from a peace project to a war project? The aim of this paper is to discuss these questions drawing on the insights of Max Webber, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt and Jan Patocka. I will argue that while the very existence of sovereign states presupposes a political community for which its members are willing to die, the European Union is not that kind of polity. What is more, the EU cannot transform itself into a sovereign European superstate (Morgan 2005), let alone a ‘war project’ (Leonard 2024) without abandoning its normative commitments. It would need to sacrifice both its ideal of democratic self-governance, as the peoples of Europe do not constitute a demos which could legitimise a supranational government, and its self-understanding as a novel polity that eschews violent conflicts, resorting instead to its normative power.
